This is the last effort to round up *all the research*, and it’s packed with findings on participatory budgeting design, e-government transformation and the conditions for responsive and accountable government. You’ll also find meaty overviews of community contributions, methodological deep dives, useful research and a pile of case studies.
Nov-Jan Research Roundup: the many benefits of participation, tools for building civic engagement
This roundup dumps 3 months of links, with evidence that participation boosts, trust and policy satisfaction, but info might not empower communities as we like to think. Plus insights on boosting civic engagement, the state of ICT4D, and lots of useful research for designing open data and government crowdsourcing initiatives.
September Roundup: Why institutionalization fails, the limited trust dividends of participation, AI all the rage.
Roundup: more efficient FOI requests, activism disruptions and efforts to counter misinformation
Roundup: behavior change, early adopters, matchmaking NGOs with researchers, and measuring women’s access to the web.
Last week's roundup of civic tech research had a lot of absurdity, from presidential tweets to SCIGen, plus findings on when online activism provokes responses from authoritarians and who adopts online reporting platforms first.
Roundup: circumvention on the rise, costing closed contracting, better case selection, and a check list for digital methods
Last week saw new evidence on the costs of closed contracting, features for participatory engagement, and the positive outcomes of collaborative and adaptive development programming. Plus there's new resources for using Stata and guidance on digital and econometric methods. Plus, smart phones make us do silly things.
Roundup: gateways to mobilization online, declines and measures of free expression, accountability case studies, and the dead web.
Roundup: degrees of responsiveness, evidence on smart participation design, how digital mobilization works, civic engagement with the dead
Lots of findings in civic tech research last week. Evidence on how to build open procurement and citizen participation initiatives, field experiments on degrees of responsiveness and accountability workshops gone wrong. New resources on crowdsourced legislative processes and evaluating police accountability, plus insights on citizen policy preferences and lots of cases studies. All of this...
Roundup: the impact of election-tech, 5 years of open data, and RCT threats to children
Findings: tech and elections Comparative research indicates that SMS is the most effective messaging platform for voter mobilization, while Brazilian research shows a that e-voting has had dramatic effects on both mobilization and enfranchisement. Meanwhile, a US survey suggests that competent poll-workers boost voter confidence that votes would be counted. Well, yeah. A global poll by the pew...
A belated summer dump (w 28-36)
So I’ve been away for a whopping 8 weeks, bouncing between holidays, summer schools, consultancies and moving the fam to DC. Somehow the internet refused to stop while I was gone. So as I get back into the swing of things, here is an abbreviated summary of the summer’s findings in civic tech research, plus a couple of choice weeds and reflections.